Cyril Vernor Miles

Just over a month after his younger brother Alfred was killed in action, Cyril Miles was sent to fight in the Battle of Loos.

At school, Cyril was a keen sportsman, participating particularly in Cricket and Football — receiving a Pink in footer in Lent 1911. But he also earned himself a reputation for playing pranks.

In his third winter at the school, Miles and a group of friends were discovered “very busy emptying pails of water in yard to make a slide for tomorrow if it freezes”, and got into trouble for being on the roof “and snowballing people in College Street, to their amusement and their victims’ disgust as theyÔÇª were quite invisible so they say”. One evening in January 1909, Miles produced a dead mouse that had just been caught in Hall, which his friend Hobson — an aspiring doctor — skinned.

When he left the school in 1911, he went on to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he continued to be a core member of the sporting scene. In Feburary 1914, he was mentioned in The Elizabethan:

Mr. C.V. Miles is a tower of strength to the all-victorious Pembroke Soccer team, which we believe to be so far unbeaten. He owns a small motor of a somewhat obstreperous disposition, which has on at least one occasion dragged him into the jaws of that legal code which he is said to be studying.

In August 1914, Cyril joined the South Wales Borderers as 2nd Lieutenant, and was attached to the Welsh Regiment in February 1915. He was sent out to the western front, where he was promoted to Captain on 29th July 1915. His little brother Alfred, who had been there since the previous October, was killed in Vermelles in August 1915.

Only a month later, on 26th September, Cyril was killed in action at Hulloch near Loos.